


A Tapestry of Molecules

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [170]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Intervention, Jewish Wanda Maximoff, Lapsed Jewish Wanda, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16216121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Is it suicide, Wanda wonders, to willingly choose death in order to save another? To know one has no way out but a way which means death? Chosen, in one’s right mind?She thinks most would class it sacrifice, and honour it. She knows her brother’s intentions, too, knows why he made the call he did: no child should suffer as they had suffered. Maybe it was sacrifice.But he made a choice to die for sake of another, and is praised for it.Is that not why she wants to die as well? For another?





	A Tapestry of Molecules

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [MaximoffFicExchange2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MaximoffFicExchange2018) collection. 



> > **Prompt:**
>> 
>> Wanda attemps suicide after losing her brother in the battle in AOU// whether she succeeds or not would be up to you. Some (a lot) of angst and deliberation beforehand would also be amazing 
> 
> Some notes before we begin:
> 
> 1\. **NO ONE** attempt Vision's particular way of getting through to someone who is depressed and/or suicidal. It is an exceedingly reckless thing to do and potentially even more harmful. It works here because this is _fiction_ and Wanda has severe moral qualms.
> 
> 2\. My understanding is that the Jewish view on suicide is complicated, in that it is regarded as a sin, barring those who died to avoid being forced from their faith or being killed, choosing to take it into their own hands, but that many who do commit what most would regard as suicide are also viewed as not necessarily being in their right mind, meaning it is therefore not actually a sin. If I have made an error here, I would appreciate being corrected.
> 
> 3\. The title is from a Cloud Cult song, specifically [No One Said It Would Be Easy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQyhNfmjcOg) which I will point out now was _also_ in the running as a title. Luckily for you, my girlfriend convinced me to be subtler.

They say that suicide is a sin. That it means you throw away the life that G-d has given you. That you think He’s wrong, or made a mistake. That you would argue with and disobey Him.

Wanda’s Jewish. She’s always been down to argue G-d’s decisions.

 

* * *

 

When they finally move to the Compound, Wanda’s doing… mostly ok. The Bartons have been kind and welcoming, but with baby Nate it's not really feasible for her to stay when she still has screaming nightmares two nights out of every twelve.

The baby’s name is another issue. Kind of. She’d agreed to let them use her brother’s name, but some part of her cannot bear to hold and gentle a baby named for someone dead. _Her_ someone.

So she moves to the Compound and finds her space in amongst the rooms there. She doesn’t have much. A few things saved from the streets that had been stashed at the castle. What she’d had on her in Novi Grad - some make up stuffed into pockets, the photo of their parents. A lock of her brother’s hair, and a blanket gifted to her by the Bartons.

Her room, with its small scattered things, feels bare.

 

* * *

 

There are many views on suicide. Orthodoxy says it is a sin, but more lenient rabbis argue that any who would consider it are not in their right mind - and so it cannot be a sin. Wanda does not know what mind she is in, if not her own - she can see it, every inch, and wonders if that makes her wrong for considering death a welcome thing.

She was born with her brother, after all. She was supposed to die with him.

 

* * *

 

Training is… it takes her mind from it all. That much can be said for it. Its tiring and it’s stressful and none of the team have even half an idea of what her powers can actually do except for her so half her drills she has to come up with herself. Steve tries, at least - he, like Vision, doesn’t seem to fear her or her powers - but Natasha seems to want to push them all to some degree of independence right off the bat and Wanda doesn’t have the first clue what to do with that. To her, independence is her brother and her, a team.

Her brother, she reminds herself, is dead.

 

* * *

 

They say that you owe G-d your life. He made all things, and so He made you and thus you owe a debt.

Wanda thinks this is folly. Why does she owe anyone her life? She never asked for it. Or, if she did, she is certain that living and dying with her brother was a guarantee she had asked first. They were too close, too aware of one another for it to be anything but some bonded fate.

If there is anyone she owes her life to it is Vision, who saved her life for no reason other than kindness, and to her brother, who protected her all their lives.

It is only this last that stays her hand.

 

* * *

 

It is not exactly that she doesn’t care to live. No. Her brother put too much effort into protecting her for her to turn _entirely_ away from what he offered her. But… she doesn’t care if she dies, either. She does not seek death, but she doesn’t exactly seek to _avoid_ it either. In training she lets blasts from Rhodey and Vision skim right by her face, dips her head only slightly to duck Sam’s dives. When she lifts herself off the ground with scarlet, there are many times when she does not catch herself on the way back down.

There is something about the closeness of it, the near-misses, that makes her feel alive.

 

* * *

 

Is it suicide, Wanda wonders, to willingly choose death in order to save another? To know one has no way out but a way which means death? Chosen, in one’s right mind?

She thinks most would class it sacrifice, and honour it. She knows her brother’s intentions, too, knows why he made the call he did: no child should suffer as they had suffered. Maybe it was sacrifice.

But he made a choice to die for sake of another, and is praised for it.

Is that not why she wants to die as well? For another?

 

* * *

 

“Kid,” Steve says softly standing in her doorway. “We’re worried about you.”

 

* * *

 

“You know,” Sam says, leaning back on the sofa, beer in hand, “You can talk to us.”

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know what you’ve been through,” Rhodey says. “But we’re all a little screwed up here.”

 

* * *

 

“We have a job,” Natasha says. “And a duty to fulfil it. If you can’t, or are having trouble, we _can_ get you help. But you have to let us know.”

 

* * *

 

Platitudes and advice and the strange compassion of people who know nothing much about her in the end. Is it so surprising that the one who gets through to her is the one who knows even less?

 

* * *

 

“If you wish to die,” Vision says quietly. “You could always ask.”

He’s standing in the doorway - an improvement on the first week when he’d floated through walls without a thought - clad in some attempt at normal human clothes. As ever, his words carry no hint of judgement. It’s something she likes about him.

Then she realises what he said.

 

* * *

 

Death by one’s own hand is one thing. Intentional or otherwise: to kill oneself is one’s own issue. She has seen children starve because they will not ask for help, seen junkies jab the final needle in themselves. Seen people run towards a blaze to try to pull people out.

To choose one’s own death is one thing.

It is something entirely else to have someone else be the instrument of it. To pick a fight knowing you will lose, to cross a boundary knowing the punishment. Turning your enemy into a murderer.

That, Wanda knows, is something else.

 

* * *

 

“Miss Maximoff?” Vision asks. “Did you hear me?”

He’s standing straight, head slightly tilted.

Wanda nods and swallows. “I have no intention,” she says. “Of turning someone else into a murderer.”

“In the last two training sessions there were twenty four times you could have assured your safety rather than risking it.” Vision’s voice is quiet. There is no sense of judgement. It is simply… truth. “If you do not wish to make someone else into a murderer, why did you risk it twenty four times? Are we not your team?”

P-

Her _brother_ was her team. She is not sure, yet, what the Avengers are to her.

Vision stays, quiet in the doorway for several long moments. He watches her, but there is no weight to it, no pressure on her to respond. From what she can see of the edges of his mind, he doesn’t expect one. He isn’t asking question so she can answer _him._ He’s asking questions to make her ask _herself._

“May I come in?” he asks. “It is only, the Captain is coming, and I imagine you do not want him asking about this.”

Wanda nods, a jerk like a marionette and Vision steps inside, shutting the door behind him. He sits at a distance - the low grey ottoman that turned up in her room after the first time Steve came to check on her after training - but close enough that, if she wished, she could reach out and touch him.

Her hands stay folded in her lap.

“I know that we are not a team yet,” he says. “But that is what training is for. We cannot be a team if one of us will use the rest of us to die.”

 

* * *

 

A team. The Avengers were a team that she tore apart with little more than nightmares. The protests she attended, those were a kind of team too, but they fell apart each time, with each conflict.

The only team which has never failed her was with her brother.

 

* * *

 

She has words. She knows she does. She’s thinking them right now.

But every time she tries to open her mouth, the words won’t come. She tries to make a sentence - tries to etch out _the only team I had was my brother_ into her mind, but the first words fade before she can finish. She looks at her hands, resting in her lap, as though they hold the answer, hold the words she cannot say.

Somehow, Vision seems to know exactly the words that are escaping her.

“You and your brother were a team,” he says. “And I am given to understand that adapting to loss can be strange and difficult. But that is what training is for, and training indicates that you wish to die.”

When she turns to look at him, his eyes are bright and green and fixed on her. But there is no pressure to his gaze.

“If you wish death,” he says again, “You can just ask.”

“I won’t-”

“But you are,” he says. “And not out of malice. Out of pain. And if you want that gone, I will help you.”

Wanda looks at Vision, and once more sees the creature who tore his brother-maker from the net.

“They’d lock you up,” she says.

Vision’s smile is a small thing. “They’d have to catch me and convict me first. I’m not human. Whether they could convict me under human law when I’m non-human and not even a year old is a question they’d have to resolve before they could do that.”

“You don’t want to kill things,” she says instead. “If I asked you-”

Vision shakes his head. “Do you remember what I said about Ultron? _He’s in pain. But his pain will roll over the earth, so he must be destroyed.”_ There is something twisting in the depths of his eyes, something Wanda thinks she may just understand. “You are in pain. And your pain will roll over the team if you cannot contain it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will happen. So, I say again: if you wish to die, you can ask.”

 

* * *

 

Vision is a strange creature. He is not entirely human, and yet, in some ways, more human than anyone else on the team. He is young and he is fallible, though he does not yet seem to see it himself. He is learning, and he is adapting, becoming more than just what he was made to be.

Wanda wonders how many of the team see this, and how many see the JARVIS they lost or the Ultron they defeated.

Vision is not human, and so maybe if he ended her life it would be less of a sin than if she did it herself, or let herself die in training. And he offers it, freely, not tricked or forced, but a choice willingly made.

Or maybe it would be the worse crime, for darkening an innocent soul, for spitting in the face of all Pietro had done for her.

Pietro. She misses him. Misses him so much it aches.

Vision’s eyes are green and watchful and utterly, utterly without weight. Even Pietro’s gaze had weight, a slight pressure, an expectation. The understanding that she would lead and he would follow.

Vision stands with her on an even playing field, and asks if she will make him a murderer.

 

* * *

 

“No,” she says, and it is barely audible, a half-breath exhaled with barely a shape given to it. She shakes her head and doesn’t back down when Vision’s brows rise. “No,” she says. “I won’t- I won’t make you a murderer.”

Slowly, Vision rises from his half-hunched posture. Elbows lift from legs, hands no longer clasp together. Slowly, so slowly, he smiles.

“And the team?”

“Them too.”

He stretches out a hand, as though to shake.

“If you need help,” he says. “You can always ask.”

She doesn’t know how to explain to him that, all her life, she’s never had to ask. Pietro had always simply _known._ But she knows how to tell him that she will ask, now.

She takes his hand.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this. Feel free to ping me at my [blog](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/%22), and please leave comments!


End file.
